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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22890790">the breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/aflashofgreen/pseuds/aflashofgreen'>aflashofgreen</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Character Study, Draco Malfoy-centric, F/M, Future Fic, Gen, Harry Potter Epilogue Compliant, Introspection, Malfoy Family Feels (Harry Potter), Not Harry Potter and the Cursed Child Compliant, Post-Hogwarts, Post-Second War with Voldemort, Post-War</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 11:20:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,342</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22890790</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/aflashofgreen/pseuds/aflashofgreen</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Mostly he didn’t expect this would be his life.</p><p>Draco post-war and the life he builds with Astoria.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy, Draco Malfoy &amp; Lucius Malfoy &amp; Narcissa Black Malfoy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>46</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the breaking of a wave cannot explain the whole sea</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">


        <li>
            Inspired by

            <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/638168">until death did you part from the mess you made</a> by <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/morzz/pseuds/morzz">morzz</a>.
        </li>

    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>My headcanons for Draco and the Malfoys post-war. Well, except for Lucius not being jailed for his crimes, that’s JKR’s headcanon and she can thank me for indulging her.</p><p>I was overcome with feelings for Draco and Astoria again last night and finally completed this fic, which in its first iteration dates back to 2012. Shoutout to Lyssie, who inspired me with her fic too and which everyone should go read.</p><p>Title is a quote from The Real Life of Sebastian Knight by Vladimir Nabokov.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>The trial lasts seventeen hours in total.</p><p>Saint Potter then goes back to his clique and the adoring outside world. The fucking title never suited him better — he stands before the newly constituted Special Unit for War Crimes appointed by the Wizengamot and gives a fucking testimony of the Malfoys' ultimate good will and the critical role they played in Voldemort’s demise.</p><p>Never mind the fact Mother only ever acted in accordance to her best interests and those of her family, and Father has been covered in blood for years.</p><p>
  <em>And I have permanent ink on my forearm.</em>
</p><p>The Malfoy family walks out free of charges and never back to their old life. Outside court, Potter nods to him and his anger doesn’t matter anymore.</p><p><em>What I have is shame, they all tell me,</em> he thinks.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Draco leaves court and the world forgets about him for a while. He finds it suits him; he’s eighteen and the heir to the Malfoy name. He has enough on his shoulders already.</p><p>When he finds an apartment, Mother kisses his cheek and helps him move out. He doesn’t miss the way she frowns when she thinks he can’t see her. Father never hides his disapproval in the first place.</p><p>“Muggle London?” Pansy laughs for ages.</p><p>“Who would expect me there?” he replies.</p><p>She stays over sometimes, rants until she falls asleep on his couch. She’s decided to pursue her studies abroad and Draco needs a place to escape. For the first time, they both long for anonymity. Neither of them is ready for introspection.</p><p>The Ministry is still busy with investigations and trials and sentencing. When they don’t have updates to offer on those, news coverage focuses on funerals — they attended Vincent Crabbe’s two weeks ago — and families’ grief. He knows Mother attempted to reach out to her last living sister. Andromeda Tonks did not write back.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Then comes the time for ceremonies and medals are thrown around like presents. The Daily Prophet reports <em>GOLDEN TRIO TO BE THE YOUNGEST RECIPIENTS OF ORDER OF MERLIN FIRST CLASS</em>. It’s sickening.</p><p>But Granger doesn’t show up to the commemoration evening the Ministry organizes, and Potter and Weasley are left to deal with the pompousness of it all. They look utterly miserable and that’s somewhat of a comfort.</p><p>Mother insisted that he be her date to the event. Why she bought an invitation in the first place is beyond him. Being there feels wrong and he spends the night pretending not to care about all the glares people send him or the angry whispers that follow them. Potter and Weasley are announced on stage and he vaguely registers them babbling through a speech.</p><p>Weasley grows better at it over the years and Potter moves on from looking miserable to merely uncomfortable. Granger spends all her life refusing to acknowledge any award she receives. The years come to pass and that’s the most Draco will ever like her.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Astoria Greengrass stumbles into his life, literally.</p><p>“I only got my Apparition license yesterday, mind you.”</p><p>Her notebook fell from her arms and sketches are scattered around them. Abstract silhouettes and other doodles. He helps her pick them up and walks away.</p><p>That should be the end of it, except they keep running into each other. A period of time she would later refer to as That Time Your Father Stalked Me, which Draco would like to protest, <em>he did not.</em></p><p>See, Astoria is not the kind of person to believe in signs or fate. Neither is Draco, but Merlin she makes him reconsider.</p><p>She’s just graduated from Hogwarts and growing tired of his face, or so she says. Draco is twenty-one and he is falling in love.</p><p>In the end, Astoria asks him out on a date first and this time Draco would like to point out, she totally did.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>When Astoria officially moved into his flat, everything went on as usual perhaps because she had practically been living there for months already. She travels often, anywhere a job opportunity arises, and Draco is on his own for weeks on end. He worried at first what it meant that they could spent so much time apart.</p><p>“Do you feel lonely?”</p><p>He’s never been asked questions like these before Astoria. She’s the only one he doesn’t feel entirely embarrassed talking about his feelings with, so he thinks about it. <em>Sometimes</em>, he concludes, but mostly he didn’t expect this would be his life. There are many things he never expected to become familiar with, until she came along.</p><p>“I miss you.”</p><p>“Then come visit me, silly.” She takes his hand and laces their fingers together. “You know, the muggles have this great device called a telephone that allows you to speak with your loved ones who are far away. It’s less of a hassle and more comfortable than a floo call too.”</p><p>He laughs, but comes home with two mobiles the next day.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>Young adulthood for Draco is marked by solitude. It’s different from loneliness, yes, but he still struggles to find an occupation to pass the time.</p><p>“How lucky of you.” Ginny Weasley rolls her eyes at him when they both find themselves at Andromeda’s.</p><p>He wants to retort his family has earned their money, but holds his tongue. She won’t care what he says, and he will only succeed in never being invited back here. Besides he is privileged, that’s not a lie. Starting an argument over a factual statement would be ridiculous, right? They’re grown-ups now, not angry teenagers.</p><p>Teddy Lupin stretches himself up on the couch, his little hand cupped over the woman he calls his aunt’s ear only to whisper loudly, “That’s my cousin.”</p><p>“I know, sweetheart. Him and Harry went to Hogwarts together.”</p><p>“Harry is my godfather!” The toddler informs him happily. At least one person here is impressed by Draco. <em>Saint Potter</em>, he thinks sarcastically though it lacks its usual bite, <em>always building bridges and my greatest accomplishment is to have met him.</em> He almost groans.</p><p>Astoria is in Manilla, interning for the National Museum of Magical Artifacts, and then she’s in Vienna, working on her painting skills and learning how to preserve sculptures. Pansy moved back to England not long ago and will soon take the bar exam. He’s the only one who doesn’t have a career. They both tell him not to stress about it, and as was pointed out by Weasley already, they’re right that it doesn’t have to be a concern, but the truth is he’s bored.</p><p>One day he’s so bored he picks up his old copy of Advanced Potion Making and starts making his way through every recipe, remembering old classmates, smiling at some memories and cringing at others. He gives most of the medicine and antidotes he makes to his parents, considers offering them to Andromeda, but isn’t sure she’d accept them yet. His cabinet fills up quick and so do his notebooks when he follows Astoria’s advice to keep a diary.</p><p>Later, he starts brewing his own recipes, working on his own potions. It’ll be years before he perfects a single one. It’ll be time well-spent too. He isn’t bored anymore.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>It’s too late in the night or too early in the morning when he brings Astoria a glass of water and she brings him news.</p><p>“I thought we were careful.”</p><p>“So did I.”</p><p>The world shifts and he feels lightheaded. In the back of his mind, there’s a memory of Astoria with a blond-haired toddler. The child is Teddy, who changes the color of his hair to match Draco’s every time they meet. It’s an innocent attempt at winning his cousin over ever since Draco first started visiting Andromeda with his wife’s encouragement. His wife who is pregnant.</p><p>He pictures Astoria with their child. The image is nice, always has been even if he couldn’t say so. Their future will be nicer still.</p><p>It’s never been easier to match the smile on Astoria’s face.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>A couple months later, when her waist starts getting bigger, they visit his parents. They are not here to deliver any news, Lucius and Narcissa already know. Astoria had wanted to wait until her fist pregnancy appointment at St Mungo’s before telling anyone, and so when she’d come back happy and healthy from the hospital, they had gone to sleep in each other’s arms, and in the morning he had kissed her and wished her a good day at work before sitting down at their kitchen table to write a letter. Within hours he’d received congratulations.</p><p>Today they sit across his parents and Mother reaches for Astoria’s belly before catching herself. Astoria simply asks if she would like to touch it and Draco wishes things could always be this easy. But Malfoy manor hasn’t changed in his absence and neither have its inhabitants.</p><p>Draco anticipates the gossip too. The press will whisper about history soon repeating itself and if it were true… <em>what’s so terrible about trying to protect your family?</em></p><p>It’s not really a question, but Astoria’s voice still answers in the darkness of their bedroom. “You shouldn’t have had to and he never will.”</p><p>There’s a lump in his throat he will never swallow. He feels the mattress shift behind him, the tender touch of Astoria’s face pressed between his shoulders and her arms encircling him. He closes his eyes, desperately trying to block the pain, to swallow it down and drown it before it drowns him. He’d been so skilled at it once.</p><p>As a Malfoy, maintaining a certain level of decorum is expected, the way one might brazenly hold a hand over a lit candle, let its flame dance on the skin only to swear it didn’t hurt when it did. It is safe enough when it’s only a brief touch and yet you’re still playing with fire.</p><p>Besides, Draco can make excuses for the child he was, the same the Ministry had, but what excuses are there for Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy? Had he been asked to testify during the trial, what would he have said? He thinks he might have sent them all to jail. He might have lied and begged and cried to avoid a sentence. He thinks he might have cursed the jury, all the people in attendance and the whole Ministry, Shacklebot himself and Potter too.</p><p>He would have done all three, he thinks, and when he was almost out of breath, finally he would have cursed his parents too.</p><p>As a boy, Draco severely lacked discipline and better morals. At the height of their troubles, he even came to lack protection and spent two years scared out of his mind, trying to make himself small under the roof of his own home — but he never felt any less loved. His parents’ love had been unconditional and plentiful if perhaps misguided. For the longest time, he thought his was too.</p><p>He’s hurt people, tried to kill at least one. He truly believed in the superiority of his blood and wanted to see the Dark Lord succeed in his plans. Draco doesn’t know how to be that boy anymore, though a part of him wishes he did, because then he wouldn’t be shedding tears over the loss of his parents. <em>I am a coward. I have always been one.</em></p><p>“When I was little, Father would Mother would send me packages full of candy when I was away at Hogwarts.”</p><p>“Sweets, they always help you make friends.” It’s the kindest thing his wife ever does for him, saying this instead of anything else.</p><p>In less than five months, there’ll be three of them. Their son will have the best mom, he knows, and Draco will give him everything and more. The affection he knew as a child of Lucius and Narcissa, and the guidance he lacked under them. The things Astoria taught him so that their child will hear them, see them, twice over, and all of the other ones Draco had to figure out on his own.</p><p>He wants to raise their child to be braver than he was. To love the world around him, not only those who are like him, to laugh often.</p><p>Life rarely goes as planned, of course, and Draco’s is widely different from the one he imagined as a kid. He pictures one of the canvas in Astoria’s new studio, sees the pencil lines she draws before filling them in with paint, sometimes going overboard or off course.</p><p>“How is it going?” He will ask her.</p><p>“I have the broad strokes,” is always her reply.</p><p>This is their life.</p><p>So Scorpius doesn’t grow to join any genocidal organization. He is loved (like Draco) and lovable (like Astoria) and the only scar he has to show is the one above his knee, from a game of Little League Quidditch when he was eight.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>He would never tell anyone but his sleepy baby this, but the day Scorpius was born, Draco swore he could feel his heart stretch wider in his chest.</p><p>When they bring their son home, they are confident they are both prepared for this. The house soon turns into a mess and the new parents do too. Parenthood is a different type of commitment to a tiny human who turns your life upside down, but Slytherins are nothing if not determined.</p><p>A perfect life, Draco has heard, is an oxymoron or a lie, but he thinks he’s got bloody close to it.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>The first letter their son sends from Hogwarts is short and concise.</p><p>
  <em>Dear mum and dad,</em>
</p><p>
  <em>I was sorted into Slytherin!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love you.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Scorpius</em>
</p><p>When he comes back dressed in green and silver robes just as he said he would, Draco knows some things will never change. When his son talks about Rose Weasley and asks if his new friend Al Potter can come over, well, he isn’t saddened in the least.</p><p>And if one day he has to share grandkids with Potter… it’s a good thing they’ve had practice sharing Teddy first, Astoria laughs.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>“Sweets, they always help you make friends,” is a line I borrowed from Harry Potter and the Cursed Child by J.K. Rowling and Jack Thorne. This fic obviously doesn't take into account what happened in the play, I just thought that line was cute.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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